The subject matter discussed in the background section should not be assumed to be prior art merely as a result of its mention in the background section. Similarly, a problem mentioned in the background section or associated with the subject matter of the background section should not be assumed to have been previously recognized in the prior art. The subject matter in the background section merely represents different approaches, which in and of themselves may also be inventions.
In conventional data sets, data entries within a data set oftentimes have similar characteristics. For example, records in a database may have the same values for a particular field. In the past, these similarities have been utilized to group the data entries, such that a particular group includes data entries with at least one similar characteristic.
Unfortunately, techniques in which the similarities among data entries are derived have been limited. Just by way of example, these techniques typically have only been used to group the data entries according to a single layer of commonality, such as a single common characteristic, thus failing to identify associations between various similarities. Accordingly, it is desirable to provide techniques enabling data entries in a data set to be grouped according to a particular common characteristic, where further common characteristics among that group are determined, thus identifying characteristics associated with the particular characteristic.